


Few Other Griefs

by ShannonPhillips



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Few Other Griefs

(Everything in italics is a Tolkien quote.)

_Then she fell on her knees saying: 'I beg thee!'_

_'Nay, lady,' he said, and taking her by the hand he raised her. Then he kissed her hand, and sprang into the saddle, and rode away, and did not look back; and only those who knew him well and were near to him saw the pain that he bore._

***

"Nay, lady," Aragorn says; and then he breaks. Like Isildur before him, he is too weak to do what should be done. He cannot leave Éowyn of Rohan kneeling in the dirt.

He reaches down to her. It starts as a courtly gesture, but she grasps his forearm firmly and puts her full weight behind it, so that he has to throw real muscle into heaving her up; and then she is standing inches from him. She rests in his hands and his sight is filled by her. She's wearing riding leathers. She smells of hay, sweet and grassy and rich. Her hair blows about her face and her eyes are full of shining desire.

He cups her hand in both of his, sweeping his thumb across her palm. Her hand is rough and calloused, the nails broken. It seems very small and pale against his. He leans in and kisses her fingers. He thinks she will understand: it is an act of despair.

***

Aragorn rides to Dimholt. He opens the Dark Door. He crosses the Paths of the Dead. He challenges an army of ghosts, then leads them across the length of Gondor. For five days and nights, he is wrapped in the chill of the grave, followed by the whispers of the dead.

He is haunted only by her face. 

***

It's dangerous to touch things of power.

This room in the Houses of Healing is filled with the sweet scent of athelas. Éowyn lies senseless on the soft white bed, the Tree of Gondor embroidered above her slender body. Her skin is pale even against the white coverlet; she is paler than a frost-touched lily, pale as Arwen Undomiel, and no human should ever be so. She is very near death. One small arm is flung out, the wrist extended past the edge of the bed. She has always reached for perilous things.

She offered him a wine goblet once: and once, a bowl of soup. He accepted her gifts, ever mindful lest his fingers brush against hers. He is very strong, but still a man.

Aragorn takes a deep breath. His attempts at self-preservation cannot matter now. She wanted to follow him into death; now he is following her. He puts a hand against her cheek, feels the distant tread of her heart running beneath his fingers. He thinks of horses galloping across an empty plain. The smell of kingsfoil is everywhere. He is lost.

His fingers gently trace the long lines of her throat. Her skin is not perfect; there are small lines beneath her eyes. Her nose is somewhat large. Her mouth is slightly crooked. She is so flawed, so reckless and so proud. She thinks she has the right to give her whole heart where she will.

He does not remember leaning in, only the moment when his lips find her skin. Her brow is cold against his mouth. Her breasts rise and fall, white beneath the white sheet. He is suddenly conscious of Éomer beside him, leaning anxiously over his sister, pressed in so closely that a lock of his wheat-blond hair has fallen across Aragorn's arm. These Rohirrim! he thinks.

Not trusting his voice, he reaches with his free hand towards the nurse who holds the athelas. Mercifully, she places two more sprigs in his hand. He looks at Éowyn's unresponsive face, and crushes the leaves in a sudden fierce gesture. "Éowyn Éomund's daughter, awake!," he calls to her in a roughened voice. "Awake, Éowyn, Lady of Rohan!"

But she is done with duty. There is something in her that has grown to hate Rohan, yes, and even the house of Eorl; _a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs!_ He senses it, and at the same time he knows she hears the refrain of his own heart.

What he says to her then is said in silence. Her soul is cold and broken. He wraps it in warmth and carries it back home.

Her eyelids flutter. Éomer catches his breath in hope. Aragorn returns to himself: full of love, full of sorrow, full of a longing for some nameless windswept barren place of Rohan, where oath nor duty nor title has any meaning. His hand brushes her hair as he leans away.

He leaves the place quickly, before she opens her eyes. It is dangerous to look at things of power.

***

The war was bitter beyond imagining. Living in the aftermath is harder.

For Frodo it is the worst: haunted by dreams and phantom pains, the world has become unbearable to him. Aragorn is not there for his leavetaking, but knows that the pain of it will always be stamped on Samwise's forthright face. Some hurts never heal.

Legolas refuses to believe the war is over. He brings his people south, fighting to cleanse the land befouled by Sauron. In rare summer evenings when matters of state do not consume him, Aragorn slips out of the city and the two of them walk together softly in the woods, unseen and unheard by even the foxes. They say much in few words. They are each caught in separate tides: age wears at Aragorn as the Sea calls to Legolas, a steady inexorable pulse that neither can withstand. Legolas means to fight it; Aragorn does not. It is the prerogative of a mortal heart to change.

That grace is not given to Arwen Evenstar, and so for Aragorn as well the rash choice of song-besotted youth is irrevocable. They are tied together. They are each other's doom. Even in his dreams, she is always there: ageless, immaculate, ever innocent.

On their wedding night, she is hundreds of years his elder, yet she's a shy and blushing maiden; he's the roughened veteran, trying to be gentle. His sword-calloused hands seem to scrape obscenely on her radiant skin. Her touch burns him like cold starfire. She kisses him and he loses time; when he gasps for consciousness he's got her nightblack hair tangled in his fist, one knee thrust between her slender legs, and her gossamer gown shredded beneath him. He recoils, appalled: but she only smiles her rich little rosebud smile and breathes his name. Everything after is burning pleasure so sharp it makes him sob, his whole soul flayed bare and melded into something so bright and pure it ought to destroy him. Yet by some grace he makes it though alive.

That much, at least, is given to them. And if Arwen will ever after wander the stone walls of the palace, listening for silent voices raised in song, or looking for some light that does not shine; if she will spend her days huddled like a refugee beneath the fragile boughs of the city's only Tree; if at the end of it all she repents her choice -- still there will be moments of great joy, and the people will love their Queen.

He sends Éowyn away. It is enough to endure without the remembrance of winds blowing fierce over open lands, of plain speech and silly laughter and the flawed beauty of her human face. Ithilien is a princely gift, and Faramir is openly delighted; but Eowyn looks at him with wondering eyes. _Wish me joy, my liege-lord!_ she asks him. And since there is so much that cannot be said, he says one thing as intently as possible: _I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee._

It is his own regret, not hers, that will ache through the centuries. But it is the prerogative of a mortal heart to change, and some hurts do heal.


End file.
